Saturday, April 24, 2010

"Dunn, Dunn...Dunnnnnn"

Dear Faithful Blog Readers,

We need your advice. We think we're just about ready to take the potty training plunge with this sweet boy.

We've informally given it a shot a few times (with no lasting success or enthusiam on anyone's part!), but we'd like to get all the helpful advice and tips we can before we get seriously started. So, please, wow us with your bathroom knowledge:)

3 comments:

Jennifer H. said...

In exchange for advice, I demand more pictures....
Josh trained Jonas over a weekend (while I was gone). He got the "Potty training in less than a day" book and followed it pretty closely. It involved having a doll that Jonas had to potty train and that really worked well. These are the things that I think contributed to our (their) success: it was his Dad doing it, he stuck to the program, and Jonas had some motivation for potty training that were not controlled by mom and dad (he could go into the play room at Ikea if he was trained, and could move to the next classroom in preschool). Also, there was an article in a journal of pediatric urology recently that said 2.5 years old was the optimal time to train from a bladder-health point of view, anything older could lead to incontinence later in life (I don't remember why). He also needs to have a stool that his feet can rest flat on, its difficult to relax the muscles on the bottom of your body wall if your feet aren't supported (try it, it really is harder!) We started him straight out on the big toilet, but bought a toilet seat from Home Depot that has an additional, smaller ring built in. I didn't really want to be emptying a bunch of potty seat mess....
Good luck!

sbh said...

3 Day POTTY TRAINING. Do it. You will not regret it. Google it and then buy the e-book. I think it's like $24. Rip off the band aid. Call me if you have questions!!!

Heather D said...

Well,
I think every kid might have different needs when in comes to potty training (like in all things), but here's how we trained Grace in 3 days:

She watched "Elmo's Potty Time" for a long time leading up to the big Day One.

We put her in beautiful, new and exciting training pants in the morning, set out the little potty in the kitchen (since we don't have a toilet on the first floor), and she had to sit on the potty every 15 or 20 minutes or so to "try". She got one chocolate chip for her effort and two if she peed. Three if she did #2. She ate a lot of chocolate chips but I was ok with that in exchange for her not crying about sitting on the potty so much:)

If she did use the potty successfully, we'd wait a good half hour or 45 minutes until she sat on the potty again.

She had maybe 4 little accidents the first and second day, then less on the 3rd. By the 4th she was good to go, for the most part! (remember her accident at the museum?! )

She wore pull-ups to bed, and actually she just started wearing regular undies to bed about a month ago. And she wet the bed last night. The nighttime thing has been a whole 'nother animal:)

Good luck! He'll be in underwear before you know it!